Modern vehicles (e.g., airplanes, boats, trains, cars, trucks, etc.) can include a vehicle event recorder in order to better understand the timeline of an anomalous event (e.g., an accident). The vehicle event recorder typically includes an input interface for receiving sensor data from vehicle sensors, a processor for determining the occurrence of anomalous events from sensor data, memory for storing anomalous event data, and an output interface for communicating anomalous event data. As computers become portable and ubiquitous, specialized hardware is no longer necessary to perform the functions of the vehicle event recorder.